Judges 4:1-24
Deborah
1 When Ehud was dead, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD. 2 So the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who dwelt in Harosheth Hagoyim. 3 And the children of Israel cried out to the LORD; for Jabin had nine hundred chariots of iron, and for twenty years he had harshly oppressed the children of Israel.
4 Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, was judging Israel at that time. 5 And she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. And the children of Israel came up to her for judgment. 6 Then she sent and called for Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, “Has not the LORD God of Israel commanded, ‘Go and deploy troops at Mount Tabor; take with you ten thousand men of the sons of Naphtali and of the sons of Zebulun; 7 and against you I will deploy Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his multitude at the River Kishon; and I will deliver him into your hand’?”
8 And Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go!”
9 So she said, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the LORD will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kedesh. 10 And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; he went up with ten thousand men under his command, and Deborah went up with him.
11 Now Heber the Kenite, of the children of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, had separated himself from the Kenites and pitched his tent near the terebinth tree at Zaanaim, which is beside Kedesh.
12 And they reported to Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor. 13 So Sisera gathered together all his chariots, nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people who were with him, from Harosheth Hagoyim to the River Kishon.
14 Then Deborah said to Barak, “Up! For this is the day in which the LORD has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the LORD gone out before you?” So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him. 15 And the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army with the edge of the sword before Barak; and Sisera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot. 16 But Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth Hagoyim, and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword; not a man was left.
17 However, Sisera had fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite; for there was peace between Jabin king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. 18 And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said to him, “Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me; do not fear.” And when he had turned aside with her into the tent, she covered him with a blanket.
19 Then he said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a jug of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him. 20 And he said to her, “Stand at the door of the tent, and if any man comes and inquires of you, and says, ‘Is there any man here?’ you shall say, ‘No.’”
21 Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, and it went down into the ground; for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. 22 And then, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him, and said to him, “Come, I will show you the man whom you seek.” And when he went into her tent, there lay Sisera, dead with the peg in his temple.
23 So on that day God subdued Jabin king of Canaan in the presence of the children of Israel. 24 And the hand of the children of Israel grew stronger and stronger against Jabin king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin king of Canaan.
The continuing downward spiritual spiral of Israel under the imperfect judges is seen as they did evil through idolatry and immorality to confront to the world (Romans 12:2, 1 John 2:15-16, 17) instead of to the LORD according to His word. For the nation, the prophetess Deborah was judging Israel and directing its warfare as an adviser to generals over the armies of the LORD, not to be confused as a spiritual equivalent of a pastor or elder in the church today. The people consulted with her to render judgments for wartime decisions. She provided guidance to make good decisions about troop deployment and even went with the generals into the battle area to assist them in making sound decisions that honored God. She therefore passed godly advice to Barak saying , “Up! For this is the day in which the LORD has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the LORD gone out before you?” She pointed as a prophetess to follow the directions of the LORD to attack and gain victory over Sisera. But the victory would be at the hand of a woman. Not Deborah, but Jael. She drove the tent peg into the forehead of Sisera and God had through her subdued Jabin king of Canaan in the presence of the children of Israel. This shows us that God uses men and women of all walks of life, in government and in other ordinary relationships, to lead a nation to victory over the enemy and for the glory of God. The problem with seeing a prophet like Deborah as a spiritual overseer confuses the role of Old Testament prophets with New Testament church leadership, where it is made clear that elders (to include pastors) are male only (1 Timothy 3:1, Titus 1:5-6) due to the headship design from Adam and Eve expressed in the scriptures (Genesis 2:18, 23, 24, 3:6, 13, 1 Timothy 2:12-13, 14) to rule the body of Christ (Ephesians 5:23-24, 1 Corinthians 11:3, 11-12) under His headship authority. Too often the church today does not rightly divide the word of truth to see the difference between equality of equal worth with different roles in God’s sight (Galatians 3:28) and the world’s shifting view around us, and then conflate the two instead of applying godly discernment by the Word and Spirit who is the mind of Christ in us to keep each truth in view to honor God as we have been designed and created to serve Him and one another in the church and in the world we live in. Apart from Jesus Christ and the word of God we also err and will continue to spiral downward in sin if we do not listen to the ones with true biblical spiritual authority (Hebrews 13:17, Acts 20:27, 28) and guidance who have been given such spiritual understanding as a gift (Ephesians 4:11-12, 1 Corinthians 12:28) and calling for the body, a gift to minister the word and its meaning (Nehemiah 8:3, 8) to apply in our lives to honor and glorify the Lord.
